Joseph Wiener

Joseph Wiener (12 October 1902-14 December 1999) was a Generalleutnant of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany who fought in World War II.

Biography
Joseph Wiener was born on 12 October 1902 in the Grasbrunn municipality of the district of Munich in the Kingdom of Bavaria, a member of the German Empire (present-day Germany). Wiener's paternal family came from Austria while his mother's family was a line of Roman Catholic citizens of Bavaria for many decades. Wiener was too young to be sent to the front lines during World War I, but he joined the Bavarian police force in 1923. He aided in the quelling of the Beer Hall Putsch and was not a member of the Nazi Party until 1933, when they took over the Weimar Republic to form Nazi Germany.

Wiener was originally an opponent to Adolf Hitler's introduction of national socialism to Germany, but after witnessing his successes in conquering the Sudetenland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, he trusted Hitler and became an army officer. Wiener was an Oberst by 1940, when he served in the invasion of France. Wiener became the commander of the German 338th Infantry Regiment during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and Wiener gained experience in the fighting for Stalingrad in 1942. Wiener served with Army Group South during World War II and was one of the members of the staff of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Wiener was promoted to Generalleutnant in 1944 during Operation Barbarossa and commanded a combined battalion of Bulgarian and German troops during the defense of the Balkans in August. Wiener's battalion defected to the Soviet Union in September as the Bulgarians joined the Allied Powers, and he fled to Hungary to seek reassignment.

Still without a job at the turn of 1944 into 1945, Wiener left Budapest in December on a staff jeep as the Soviets launched their offensive on the city. Wiener was able to reach Vienna by February 1945 and was made the commander of a patchwork of German and Austrian troops that fled the 3rd Ukrainian Front under Fyodor Tolbukhin into Austria. By 7 May 1945, his army was trapped between the US 7th Army of Alexander Patch in Salzburg to the west and the 3rd Ukrainian Front to the east at Liezen, and from 7 to 12 May his forces fought in the Liezen Pocket campaign. 221 German troops were killed and Wiener suffered facial injuries from a grenade detonation, and Wiener surrendered his surviving 3,279 German troops to Sergeant John Hammond on 12 May. Wiener was imprisoned in West Germany until 1947, when he was released. Wiener moved to the United Kingdom in 1950, Italy in 1954, and Sweden in 1969, and he died in Stockholm in 1999 at the age of 97.